Gucci Mane on His Newfound Sobriety: “I Was a Drug Addict”

You know it’s a good day when The New York Times publishes an in-depth profileon Gucci Mane. In the article, Gucci gets serious about his prison sentence and how it forced him to change his partying lifestyle. “It’s been tough to be a Gucci fan,” he said. “It’s been tough to be a Gucci friend, a Gucci sibling, a Gucci girlfriend, or a Gucci partner. I done took people through a lot.”

Gucci explained that he fell into a habit of getting drunk and high all the time, largely due to his high-flying rapper lifestyle. “In hindsight I see it for what it was: I was a drug addict… I was naive to the fact that I was numb,” he said. He noted that the only thing that forced him to get sober was ending up in prison. There, he went through extreme withdrawal, likening it to death. “Your body just craving lean bad. Stomach tore up, can’t think straight. Just mad at the world. Temper so short, so violent, so aggressive. So just rude and toxic,” he said.

RELATED

After the withdrawal passed, he focused on getting healthy. He shed “dozens of pounds” and started reading self-help books by Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. From the sound of it, it’s helped him quite a bit. “Anybody can do the stuff Gucci used to do,” he said. “Can y’all copy living how I’m living? Can y’all copy getting y’all life together?”